Cloze Launches in the App Store, You May Wonder How You Lived Without It

The hype over new mail app Mailbox has exploded
recently as the waiting list for the app continues to grow. Mailbox has a great
feature that makes it possible to “snooze” an email to read later; however, the
huge demand for what is a relatively miniscule improvement to the Gmail inbox
is starting to seem absurd to
some.

If you want to wait in a “line” of over 800,000 “early adopters,” more
power to you; or, better yet, you can download the ridiculously useful Cloze which launched in the App Store today after a successful run as a web app.

Based in Boston, Cloze allows users to
manage both their inbox and all of their social media through a single program.
Founders Dan Foody and Alex Cotê believe that they have solved the
problem of “data overload” that tends to bog us down each day. What they deem,
“a noise-canceling inbox for email, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter,” has the
capability to enhance the myriad ways in which we connect and engage with those
who are most valuable to us on the internet.

As Foody pointed out, “The inbox, and how people use the inbox today, is
completely broken.” Foody and Cotê gave a great example of Cloze’s benefits,
pointing out that there has been no way to prioritize “a tweet from the single
most important person to you and an email you could care less about.” The Cloze
team believes they solved this discrepancy.

The app gives all your contacts, as well as those whom you interact with
on social media, a score between 1-100, based on the strength of the
relationship. The number is assigned through an algorithm designed from the
huge base of data they have collected from their web users. After scoring the
relationships in Gmail, Exchange, or other email service and your social feed
and scores all relationships, the app figures out which information is most
relevant to you and filters out the noise. The Cloze Score between you and your
relationships is personalized specifically to you and can change based on how
your engagement with the connection grows or dissipates.

The overriding idea behind the whole concept of Cloze is a focus on
managing relationships more effectively. As Cotê and Foody explained, “The
tweet or email isn’t important, the person tweeting or sending you an email
is.” Assuming an average user receives over a hundred emails and close to
thousands of social media interactions per day, trying to separate the vital
from the mundane seems impossible. However, Cloze helps to solve this problem
but eliminating the noise and highlighting the important.

For a bit of background, Cloze launched their web application midway
through last year and have received funding from Greylock Partners, Kepha Partners, and Nextview Ventures. The company’s biggest public move,
though, comes with today’s app launch, which is something Foody and Cotê have
been working toward for some time.

So, if you are one of those folks who enjoys being used to hype the
trendy new club by being forced to stand outside while a couple of dudes inside
sip Bud Light and “dance” to dubstep, head to Mailbox (there are 814,111 folks
in front you). However, I’ll take Cloze, and the bar around the corner that has
some sneaky good short rib sandwich, a surprising array of microbrews, and the
chance to meet with that guy that I’ve been dying to meet who just had a dream
job open up at his pre-IPO startup.

Dennis Keohane is a teacher, journalist and contributor to VentureFizz. You can follow Dennis on Twitter (@DBKeohane) by clicking here.